Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective

The Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective was a group of professional women playwrights in New York active from 1971 to 1975. They wrote and produced feminist plays and were one of the first feminist theatre groups in the United States to do so. The members' individual works had been produced at the Public Theater, La Mama, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater, Café Cino,Circle Repertory Company, Mark Taper Forum, Lincoln Center, and New York Theater Ensemble.

The playwrights' group was one of the first feminist theatre groups in the country. Original members included Helen Duberstein, Helene Dworzan, Patricia Horan, Gwen Gunn, Christina Maile, Sally Ordway, Dolores Deane Walker, and Susan Yankowitz. Megan Terry and Dacia Maraini were among the guest playwrights.

The plays of the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective featured such women's issues as religious patriarchy, work-place discrimination, dominance/submission relationships, historical figures, masquerade, and sexual harassment.

Subsequent to their first production, RAPE-IN, the plays transcended the limiting context of agit-prop theatre by discarding the revenge themes current in much feminist writing at the time, and instead strove to accurately reflect the complexity of women’s lives and celebrate their accomplishments.

The company was especially noteworthy for writing about women's issues with lacerating humor in often absurdist situations. Christopher Olsen in his book, Off Off Broadway 1968 -1970 The Second Wave (2011), noted the playwrights’ abilities to balance a serious social message about the marginalization of women with a sense of humor and a commitment to good writing. Linda Killian, in analyzing the group’s first production, RAPE-IN, wrote that they “used humor, anger, and horror, sometimes in combination, sometimes alone.

Kevin Sanders, in his 1973 WABC Eyewitness News review of WICKED WOMEN stated: “Their two earlier highly successful shows, RAPE-IN and UP!–AN UPPITY REVUE! were sharp, perceptive and fiercely satirical representations of a contemporary feminist viewpoint – a tradition maintained in this new show [Wicked Women]." Gloria Rojas of WNEW-TV Midday Live, New York agreed: “Wicked Women is outrageous, funny and, to me, a little shocking.”

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